The third annual American Irony 24 Hours of LeMons race, held at Autobahn Country Club in Joliet, Illinois, is in the books. It was a rainy, blustery, guardrail-bashing affair, with plenty of surprises for the spectators. Let’s take a look at the teams that went home with trophies.

Winner on Laps, Class A Winner: Skid Marks Racing

Working as Chief Justice of the LeMons Supreme Court in the American Irony penalty box was even more grueling than usual, with 103 vehicles a-slippin’ and a-slidin’ around in the rain. Most teams had between four and eight black flags during the course of the weekend; the cleaner ones had two or three. One team, however, had zero bad-driving busts: Skid Marks Racing. Each visit to the penalty box costs a team at least a lap or two, the Skid Marks Dodge Neon won by four laps, and the P2 team caught three black flags. How is it possible to go fast and avoid spinning, crashing, sliding into the weeds, or passing under a caution flag? Watch this in-car video that showcases the way the Skid Marks drivers back off when things start getting dicey ahead, then go back to being the quickest thing on the track when the coast is clear. On top of all that, the team donated their prize money to the Alex’s Lemonade Stand childhood-cancer charity.

Class B Winner: Dos Limons Racing

Dos Limons Racing, a two-car team running a pair of late-70s Ford Fiestas, has been competing in Midwestern LeMons races going back to 2010. The cars feature a few basic suspension upgrades and one of them has a set of motorcycle carburetors atop its tiny pushrod four-banger, which resulted in a promotion to the medium-tough Class B quite a few races back. For race after race, the Limons Fiestas struggled to catch the other Class B cars and were smothered under a blanket of black flags. This time, however, something clicked, and the red Fiesta (the one with the bike carbs) took advantage of the wet weather to climb into the top ten and stayed there all weekend. For a while, we thought Dos Limons #78 might even grab the overall win, but the rain stopped and the more powerful cars pulled ahead. Still, a 9th-overall finish and a two-lap edge over the reigning Midwest Class B champions (the Blue Shells Honda Accord) is an incredible accomplishment for this team.

Class C Winner: Candy Asses

Class C, reserved for the cars that no sane person would ever think of putting on a race track (in other words, the LeMons cars we love best) usually gives us the most hard-fought and exciting battle, but this time the winner ran away with the trophy to the tune of a 19-lap edge over its nearest competitor. Normally, we’d say that the person who assigned the classes (i.e., your hard-working LeMons correspondent) made a terrible mistake when such a blowout happens, but how would you have classed a dead-stock 1997 Chevy Cavalier with automatic transmission and completely shot suspension? Good drivers, allegedly including a three-time Indy 500 veteran, made the difference here.

Most Heroic Fix, Supra Troopers

We’ve seen some pretty impressive Heroic Fixes over the years. One Honda CRX team performed five engine swaps over a single weekend, for example. However, when your 1987 Toyota Supra (one of the least reliable vehicles in LeMons racing, it turns out) suffers a comprehensive failure of front suspension components and you strip your daily-driver Supra of its ball-joints, tie-rod ends, and wheel bearings (stranding yourself a couple hundred miles away from home), you beat all the teams that performed bigger repairs.

After the race, the Supra Troopers had six guys to try to drag back to Wisconsin in a fully-caged, windowless race car (tow vehicles are for the weak!) and a dead Supra with a thoroughly trashed front suspension.

Not only that, the Supra Troopers must run a gauntlet of angry Illinois Smokeys who take a dim view of Wisconsin weirdos who dress like bogus cops and put a big one-time gumball machine on their rice-burner’s roof. Here’s the team showing the ticket they got for the light bar on their way to the track.

I Got Screwed Award: The Moonrunners

The Saturn SC is one of those cars that performs unexpectedly well in the 24 Hours of LeMons, and we fully expect an SC (or SL) to grab an overall win at some point. Over the years, a few of these cars have contended for race after race, coming in second or third a number of times but missing the top spot by a lap or two. This time, it looked like the Moonrunners’ 1991 Saturn SC had a real shot, reaching second place and really sweating the leader… but then someone forgot to reinstall the hood pins after a pit stop and the hood flew up and took out the windshield. In the 24 Hours of LeMons, you don’t need a factory windshield but you do need something to keep wayward starter motors out of your face, be it glass, Lexan, or circle-track mesh. It took the Moonrunners a good hour to fabricate a plastic windshield replacement, and they dropped down to 47th place by the time the checkered flag waved. Screwed!

Judges’ Choice: Corner Dynamic

This team brought their 1998 Volkswagen Golf, complete with lucky number 888, to the American Irony race with high hopes for its success. Fast car, a crew of drivers with autocross and track-day experience, what could possibly go wrong? Unfortunately, there’s a big difference between driving fast by yourself and driving fast on a rain-slick track full of wild-eyed LeMons racers in bumper-dropping, rod-throwing hoopties, and the Corner Dynamic guys found themselves in all-too-frequent metal-crunching conflict with other cars. But they kept trying, didn’t get frustrated, listened to the advice of the LeMons Supreme Court, and even apologized to the entire paddock for all the bent race cars via the track’s PA system on Sunday morning.

The First A-Team Theme That Isn’t Totally Lame Award: The Mr. T Party

There are several movie- and TV-based team themes that we’ve seen over and over during the seven seasons of the 24 Hours of LeMons. Back To the Future is one, The Dukes of Hazzard is another, and perhaps the most common is The A-Team. Paint your car to resemble a black GMC Vandura with a red stripe, maybe throw a GMC emblem at the grille, dress in gold chains and mohawks, and you’re done! This schtick was kind of entertaining the first couple times we saw it, but once you’ve seen a dozen BMW 3-series “Vanduras” and 50 skinny white dudes yelling “I PITY THE FOOL,” the magic just isn’t there. The Mr. T Party, however, took a different approach: instead of making their car look like the A-Team’s van, they made it into a rolling replica of Mr. T’s head, complete with expanding-foam nose, ears, and vast mohawk!

The Mr. T Party, of course, is the Legend of LeMons team responsible for the Gute Bier Blimp and the Sleigher Evil Santa’s Sleigh in past races, so it’s no surprise that they were able to convert their Mazda MX-6 into a gigantic human head.

Organizer’s Choice: Nutjob Racing

Normally, the Mr. T Party’s effort would have put a hammerlock on the Organizer’s Choice trophy, but Nutjob Racing slammed into the Autobahn Country Club with an impact like a B43 hydrogen bomb. They’d built an Arrested Development-influenced air-stairs setup onto their Honda Civic Wagovan, and then driven it 800 miles to Joliet from their home base in New York City.